France says time to turn page on colonial past

PARIS, Feb 5 (Reuters) French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy warned today against ''permanent repentance'' of France's colonial past after a senior Socialist said the country should recognise crimes it committed during its rule of Algeria.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has called on Paris to officially apologise for massacres of Algerians during France's colonial rule, which he has branded ''genocidal'', while Paris has instead called for ''mutual respect''.

During a visit to Algiers yesterday, Jack Lang, special adviser to Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal, said: ''The best way to apologise is to recognise the reality of the crimes that were committed by colonisation in Algeria,'' French daily Le Monde reported.

In a message to Bouteflika handed over by Lang, Royal said colonisation was a ''system of domination, plunder and humiliation'', the paper reported.

Thousands of French soldiers died in Algeria's 1954-1962 war of independence, and Algiers says 1.5 million Algerians were killed.

''Let us beware of a bad conscience and of permanent repentance.

All this is linked to the stiffening of memory, to the necessarily painful memory of colonisation,'' Douste-Blazy told Europe 1 radio today.

''We should now turn a page, manage to look at Algeria as a partner, equal to equal.'' With a presidential vote less than three months away, colonialism touches on key election themes in France, such as immigration policy and security in the country's poor suburbs, where millions of people of immigrant origin live.

Conservative frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also interior minister, has sought to soften his tough law-and-order image in a bid to broaden his appeal.

His rival Royal has criticised Sarkozy's tightening of immigration rules and called for more community policing measures.

REUTERS MS PM2325